Day one: Everything's a blur on the first day of school

Jennifer Bowman, 27, was wiping tears from her eyes after dropping off her son, A.J., for his first day of kindergarten at Hillcrest Elementary School.

He had never been to preschool or day care, but apparently was good and ready for kindergarten.

“He told me to leave if I was going to cry,” she said. “He wouldn’t give me a kiss because there were other kids around.”

She will go through this again before too long: Her younger son is 18 months old.

It was the first day of school for the 31 traditional-calendar schools in the Alamance-Burlington School System, and it was time to get the routine down again.

Cars dropping off students at Turrentine Middle School were lined up about 7:45 a.m. on Edgewood Avenue all the way to O’Neil Avenue. A lot of parents pulling up on Hermitage Road directly across from the school just parked on the street and walked or sent their kids over the crosswalk.

One man just threw his black hatchback into reverse and backed about 50 yards up Hermitage into a side street. A few minutes later, two middle schoolers were walking toward the school, and he was headed away.

LEADERS FROM the Alamance-Burlington School System central office, including Interim Superintendent William Harrison, dropped in at Hillcrest as part of their first-day tour.

“At 8:10 a.m., (the first day of school) looks great,” Harrison said on his way out.

The office at Hillcrest was full just after school started with parents filling out last-minute paperwork.

FACULTY IN green Hillcrest T-shirts met students out front at drop off with hugs and balloons. Principal Julie Bethea said they wanted to make the first day of school a celebration.

The new year means a new layout for classrooms. The halls this year have animal themes. To the left was the “Parrots of the Yellow Wing,” straight ahead were the “Red Wing Road Runners,” and to the right were the sea turtles.

Down the sea turtle hall were kindergarten through fifth-grade classrooms. Bethea said it was a new system having all the grades working together. Teachers will plan together making sure what students are learning in one grade will get them ready for the next.

“It lets teachers tell each other what they need to do to get ready for the next level,” Bethea said.

ALSO DOWN the Sea Turtle hall loud music came out of the physical-education room. When it stopped, about 22 students were scattered around the room in pairs. Their teacher told them to introduce themselves.

Hillcrest has about 530 students this year, Bethea said, which she calls a “comfortable number.”

Part of what makes it a comfortable number, Bethea said, is teacher assistants.

“When the word came that they were coming back,” Bethea said, “that was a great day.”

There will also be 14 student teachers from Elon University, Bethea said, so she says she is training her next batch of recruits.

DARCY SMITH had her third-grade art class making their folders for the year with huge, heavy sheets of paper with spines of green construction paper. She will have 500 of these to keep track of this year.

Students’ art, music and performance will be another way to get parents in the door to see their children’s work on display, Bethea said. While it does not show up on state tests, she said, art is still a big part of being a kid.

One of Smith’s students, Raheem Chapman, started third grade the day after his eighth birthday. He said his favorite subjects are technology and art.

“Because I’m a master of electronics,” Chapman said.

Bethea reminds him of the iPads Smith uses in her class.

“Technology with art equals technological art,” Chapman said.

NO STUDENTS were in the music room at 8:30 a.m., but waiting for them were neat rows of xylophones, metallophones and a glockenspiel. These are all the same type of instrument with rows of wood or metal keys that sound different notes when struck with round-headed wooden hammers. They vary by size and country of origin, said music teacher Alexis Kagel, 28.

Kagel expects 20 ukuleles soon that she bought with a fundraising campaign on donorschoose.org, a website for people to contribute to classroom requests.

On the shelves were some bright-colored drums made from big, plastic ice cream buckets from Kilwins in Wilmington. When they get worn down, she wraps them in colored, patterned duct tape.